It’s a Girl

If you’ve seen season two of the television show “Lost,” you’ll recall that the entire season revolved around the need to push a button every 108 minutes. Why? Because if the button went unpressed, the mysterious island where the show takes place would go nuclear. Or something like that.

At the time, I thought, “Jeez, having to push a button every 108 minutes would really wreak havoc on your sleep cycle.” Now, of course, I know exactly how poor Desmond Hume felt during season two of the show.

Since “Lost” is produced by a bunch of guys, maybe none of them realized that new moms — such lucky ladies! — already get to push a button every 108 minutes. If it’s not time to breastfeed, it’s time to change a diaper, or do laundry, or soothe a fussy baby who’s cross at being left in the bouncy seat for more than 10 minutes.

Having a baby is like becoming one half of a symbiotic organism. This shift is overwhelming both psychologically — I look back at photos of us in Croatia last summer and think, “Where’s the baby? Did we forget her at the hotel?” — and physically. And not just every 108 minutes.

See, once upon a time, I was an adult (sort of ) who generally managed a decent level of personal hygiene (except during the sweaty summer months) and kept a reasonably tidy and clean house (well, kind of grungy on a regular basis, but still). All of that is now gone.

It’s not just that we have a baby who’s a constant physical presence, a little person who — except when she’s asleep — always needs to be held, fed, cleaned, changed, soothed, etc. Now we have a mommy, too, who needs all of the above as well — except that she’s trying to provide both for two people instead of just herself.

Which means that a typical day at our house can feel like two incompetents trying to accomplish the basic tasks of staying fed and clean and clothed. The baby needs to eat every two hours; this is a messy business, speckled later with even messier spit-up. The mommy needs to eat, too; this is also a messy business, with mom cutting up her food into little pieces so she can try to eat one-handed while dandling the baby on her knee and not dropping too much food on herself or the baby.

At 10 weeks of age, the baby has also entered what our diaper service refers to as “the blowout stage.” (Dear God, please let this stage not last too long.) Few experiences are more frustratingly Sisyphean than breastfeeding followed by bathroom disaster (generally a perfect trifecta all over baby, mom, and whatever furnishings happen to be nearby) followed by cleanup followed by the entire cycle repeating itself — a mere 10 minutes later.

Try taking the baby to anything lasting more than two hours and it’s like not pressing the button: everything goes nuclear. Team Caroline and Delphine has already managed to totally trash a parenting class, the doctor’s office, and the audiologist’s office. Heavy-metal bands on tour have nothing on us.

As mom walks barefoot around the house — by the way, that whole barefoot-and-pregnant thing is all wrong, as the barefoot thing comes AFTER the baby is born — she notices how disgustingly black and gritty the bottoms of her feet have become. But she can’t stop to vacuum or mop, because she’s too busy just trying to keep herself and the baby together. Dishes? Lucky Caleb gets to do them when he comes home from work, tired and hungry.

According to a recent New York Times article, placing value on work done with the mind is now passé; instead, we’re supposed to value the broader satisfactions of physical labor. Maybe. But when the day’s physical labors never seem to end, it’s hard to find them satisfying. (Taking a few minutes to blog about how difficult they are? Much more satisfying.)

Frankly, the British empire at its late-Victorian peak is looking better all the time — at least the part in which an army of underpaid, underfed servants helped out new mommies. (I could really go for an ayah right about now.) And what about the pioneers who supposedly built America? Find me one of those moms who, like the one in the Little House on the Prairie series, agreed to live in total isolation with her spouse, give birth by herself, and cook, clean, and raise kids with no assistance whatsoever. If she’s not actually insane, maybe she’d have some free time left over to come help out at our place.

On my way to becoming a crazy pioneer woman myself, I’ve allowed my standards of physical comfort drop way, way down. Red welts on breasts clawed by baby during feedings? Eh, they’ll heal. Forgetting to put on those Brünnhilde breastpads that are supposed to absorb leaking milk? Oh, yeah, the sharp edges of the cross-chest seatbelt digging into tender nipples are the real reason moms don those breastplates. But hey! we just got the baby in the car seat and everything’s packed and it only took us three hours to get ready so can’t stop now! Gotta go!